


an if-then statement ;

by cinus



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Burning Rescue Lio Fotia, Burnish Galo Thymos, M/M, Reincarnation, Time Loop, featuring;, heavily hinted soulmates, they die like 10 times but they Technically dont but thought id use the tag anyway, yall mind if i give the promare some meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinus/pseuds/cinus
Summary: An if-then statement is a hypothesis that is followed by a conclusion.If there is a Lio Fotia then there is a Galo Thymos. This is a universal truth, one cannot exist without the other. The Promare have planned this out, selected them both for their own agenda. Now they just need to get the rest of the variables right.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 28
Kudos: 320





	an if-then statement ;

Childlike laughter travels through the Earth’s core, vibrations ringing through the solid iron and nickel at the centre, sending ripples through the molten layer around that and causing worldwide earthquakes on the surface. The Promare have arrived, that small disruption in the very fabric of space and time sealed behind them, left open for mere seconds, but still long enough for their plan to work.

While the Promare may not be humanoids, they are sentient, they are intelligent and they can communicate. They know what they want, they know they want to burn — billions of interconnected minds thinking in union despite the seperation of an entire universe between them — they want to burn this planet to the ground but they are not evil, they do not just want to destroy everything they come across. Ashes work well as a fertilizer and vegetation grows back stronger after a forest fire, this is what the Promare are here for, this is why they have travelled all this way to Earth. They want to make Earth better than it has ever been before, but to do that, they must first raze it to the ground, but they cannot build it back up alone.

So they plan this all out, humanity would never expect them to have this level of energy, the ability to change time, humans will think it was all just sheer dumb luck. But it was planned, and tried again and again and again until they got the exact outcome they wanted. If there is a Lio Fotia then there is always a Galo Thymos, that is a universal truth that the Promare have orchestrated. The rest of the variables are harder to manipulate.

△ △ △

The first time around goes incredibly well, or to begin with at least.

The two are born shortly after the Great World Blaze. 

Galo spends his years as a child playing pretend firefighter, sneaking into his grandfather's gear every time they visit, he dreams of joining Burning Rescue, wants nothing more than to spend his life saving people and putting out fires and as he grows older he researches Matoi tech, making his own designs. The spark in his firefighters soul has ignited. Galo grows up loved, he grows up happy, he grows up being told he can become whatever he puts his mind to. 

Lio, on the other hand, has a much less picturesque childhood. His Burnish abilities begin almost immediately, he has his first flare before he can even walk or talk and he is shipped from family member to family member, his parents never wanting to comment on their son’s ability in an attempt to not bring the family name into disrepair. Lio grows angry, he grows bitter. He is mistreated and disrespected and treated like an outsider to his own family, by society, for something he cannot control.

Galo’s family dies, and he is pulled out of the raging fire by Kray Foresight, who takes him in and helps him grow, finds him a place to live, puts him through school, gets him his dream job at the Burning Rescue as soon as he is old enough to work there. As soon as Lio turns 21 he is kicked out, his parents too guilty to cut off his access to their money so he manages to get by, barely, but he is a 21 year old man full of anger and rage and flames forced out onto the street into a world that is harsher than he realised.

Galo is 22 when he has his first mission with the Burning Rescue, he is 22 when his arm burns. Lio is 21 when he first has rocks hurled at him, he is 21 when he bleeds crimson down his face.

Galo is 22 when he first saves someone. Lio is 21 when he first kills someone.

The moment Lio watches the life drain out of someone, hears their cries die out over crackling fire, is the moment the Promare realise this attempt is already lost. Now they have to wait it out.

It takes three years for the Promare to get their closure. By now, Lio has joined the Mad Burnish and taken the leadership for himself, and Galo is a full member of the Burning Rescue.

It happens on the rooftop of a Foresight Pharmaceuticals building that the Mad Burnish have decided is the place of their next attack, and Burning Rescue has been dispatched to get people out of the building. That much, they manage to do, they get the people out from the building and off of the roof with much effort. But Galo can’t help himself.

He taunts the leaders down, manages to arrest the two that are second in command and calls for the leader himself to face him, one on one, to get extinguished by his firefighters soul. Lio obliges, anger roiling in his veins seeing Guiera and Meis on the ground and he knocks Galo to his feet with ease, uses Burnish Flares to rip the pieces of his armor off and flings them off the rooftop.

The Mad Burnish here are not a peaceful group, they do not leave exit routes for civilians to escape with their lives. The Mad Burnish here are angry, and they are bitter, and they are  _ killers _ . 

Galo doesn’t know it’s over until it’s already too late, his body is heavy and then it is hot and then it is light, he hears a soft laughter from somewhere in the expanse around him and then there is nothing. Lio kills Galo, right up there on that rooftop, engulfs his body in iridescent pink and green flames that leaves nothing but teeth and bones behind and escapes into the night taking Guiera and Meis with him. 

Two days later, the world burns. The Promare accept this as a failed attempt and they burn this timeline into oblivion, as if it never happened.

They try again.

  
  


△ △ △

The next time around, Lio and Galo spend a lot of time in ash.

They are born a few years before the end of the Great World Blaze, and each have distinct memories of playing in volcanic ash as it fell from the sky, it is far too hot for snow anymore. They each have idyllic childhoods, Galo’s is much the same as before, hanging on every word his grandfather would say, spending his time pouring over every piece of information on firefighters he can get his hands on and dresses up as a firefighter every Halloween. 

Lio’s is better this time, but almost immediately the Promare realise they have made a mistake. Lio has a safe and happy childhood, his parents love him and he is pampered, he goes away with his father on business trips and gets anything he could ever want. He never has a Burnish flare, it never manifests, this world is already lost but the Promare cannot start again until everything is over.

Galo’s family still dies, he is still rescued by Kray, and he still becomes a part of the Burning Rescue. Lio moves out when he turns 23, takes his newly finished engineering degree and heads to Promepolis to oversee the construction of a new branch of his father’s business, as his father was too busy to do it himself and Lio just wants a change of pace. There is an electrical fault, and a few months into the construction, while Lio is doing an inspection, a spark arcs and within minutes the building is going up in flames.

Lio is trapped on the third floor, he can hear the flames crackling on the other side of the wall and hears windows shattering, shards of glass scatter over him as the one he was next to cracks under the heat, mixed in with ash from the upper floors falling from the ceiling, through holes where the flooring has buckled under the heat. He thinks this is the end, as he slumps to the ground, the smoke getting to his head making him woozy and his throat burns. He swears he hears high pitched laughter for a second before the wall next to him crashes down, red and blue lights illuminating the room. He feels his body being lifted up by cool, metallic hands that carry him down to the ground where an ambulance is waiting to treat him for smoke inhalation. 

All he sees of his rescuer is blue hair standing up in ways that defy the very laws of physics, ash falling around him like the snowflakes from his childhood and he feels light in his stomach, but puts it down to nothing more than adrenaline.

It takes Lio a few days to track his mystery rescuer down, he had to wait for news articles of the event to start being printed before he could get his rescuers name,  _ Galo Thymos _ , and the exact arm of the Burning Rescue he works for. He decides he wants to meet him, wants to thank him for saving his life and that is how he ends up standing at the roller door entry to the Burning Rescue building.

It is the girl with pink hair who notices him loitering outside, looking far too well dressed for the location. “You’re the Fotia kid right? That Galo saved from that highrise fire a few days back?” She says as if it was a question, despite knowing it to be fact.

Lio nods, “I want to thank him for what he did.”

The girl looks shocked for a moment before she stands, “Not many people think to do that, I’ll go get him for you,” and she heads to the back wall, pokes her head through a doorway and calls “GALO!” at the top of her lungs.

A few moments pass before he sees the same distinct blue hair walking through the doorway —  _ was he always that tall? _ — a huge grin plastered on his face and Lio feels that same feeling in his stomach again. Before he has time to think, he is being pulled into a hug so tight he feels he might explode before he hears the girl from before cough twice, and Galo start stammering.

“Right, sorry, uh, I should introduce myself? This doesn’t happen often, I’m not really used to this.” he runs a hand through his hair and Lio notices his muscles in the light and the feeling in his stomach intensifies.

Lio shakes his head and brushes off his jacket, “You’re Galo Thymos, I read it in the papers. I came to thank you for saving my life a few days ago.”

“Ah don’t worry about it man, I was just doing my job after all!” he says, his voice so loud it echoes that it makes Lio wonder if this man even has an inside voice at all.

Lio is responding before he even realises the words are tumbling out of his mouth, “Do you need any help around here? I have an engineering degree, I can help with some of the gear you use?” 

Galo cocks his head to one side, and they hear a goblin-esque shriek coming from the garage but no argument was made against it. That was that, it seemed, Lio joined the Burning Rescue and helped Lucia when it came purely to Galo and his mech’s, he was in charge of fixing everything Galo would break and trying to implement all his insane ideas. Together, over time, they fell into a comfortable rhythm, their lives changing to fit the other in perfectly like a puzzle piece, that light feeling in Lio’s stomach returning every time he sees Galo in the light of the setting sun, when he sees him smiling after a job well done, it spikes and burns in the back of his throat when he thinks Galo is injured and wonders if this is the time he won’t come out of a burning building.

It takes him a few months to realise what that light feeling is, and then it takes him a few months more to accept it. He loves Galo Thymos, that is what he knows. It’s what Aina and Lucia know too, the two of them far more perceptive that Galo himself, they’ve been sworn to secrecy by Lio under multiple threats and they oblige, shooting him looks every time Galo runs towards him after a successful job or when he comes up with a new idea, excitedly grabbing at Lio’s shoulder to show him what he’s done.

They get called out to a job, a Mad Burnish attack on a Foresight Pharmaceuticals building and take care of it easily, Galo branded as the hero of Promepolis for capturing the two leaders and Lio watches him collect his badge with pride from the sidelines, life that week goes on and is good. Until it isn’t.

They are in Galo’s apartment — Lio spends most of his time there now — when ground splits between them, magma bubbling up between cracks underneath their feet, smoke filling the air as everything burns. They run outside, getting blasted by the heat of a world engulfing blaze, ashes of the city fall over them, like snow from their childhoods, like their fateful meeting in the Fotia building, like confetti at a wedding they maybe might’ve had. 

Over the sound of fire crackling they hear soft giggling coming from a distance and hold each others hands before they are engulfed in a cold, endless void.

△ △ △

The next few attempts end quickly, the Promare trying to brute force their way through everything to find out what does and doesn’t work. There are only two constants throughout these timelines; the first is that Lio and Galo are always there as one cannot exist without the other, the second is that when they die — and they always do — they hear childlike laughter at the end.

There is one iteration where Galo dies young, before he even gets the chance to join the Burning Rescue. He crashes his motorbike driving up to the frozen lake late one afternoon, slams into a tree he just didn’t see coming in the blinding light of the setting sun. Orange light illuminates the smoldering bike resting at the base of a tree, the colour blending with the embers that slowly spread, engulfing the tree and travelling from there. Burning Rescue are called to dispatch it, they are firefighters after all and there was no Burnish fires to be dealt with. Kray cries on the news when he hears the news, smiles to himself when he is alone in his office. The world burns six years later, Lio fueling the faulty core.

Another time, Kray runs away in shame and doesn’t save Galo from his burning house. Galo is too young to know what to do in this situation, he is trapped in his bedroom and the door handle is too hot to touch and even though he is low to the ground it is getting hard to breath. The Promare take pity on him, he is nothing more than a child. A Burnish flare takes him and for a second Galo feels like he is being held in a hug before he feels nothing at all. There is no Parnassus this time around, Kray never getting the foothold he needed to become Governor. This time, the Burnish burn the world down around them.

One time, everything seems like it is going right, until Lio gets launched into the mouth of the volcano, Absolute Zero Chain-Freezing bullet lodged deep in his chest and he never comes out. Icicles digging deep into his sternum, piercing through into the rock behind him and growing stronger and stronger from the heat emanating from the volcano itself. Lio is a strong Burnish, but he is not strong enough to overcome it this time. That is where he stays, enveloped in a cocoon of ice, until a few hours later and Kray starts the engine of Parnassus and the volcano erupts. It melts the ice away but it is too little too late and ashes are all that is left, quickly destroyed like the rest of the planet, leaving no trace of Lio Fotia’s destined existence.

The next, Galo is in Burnish Rescue and Lio is an unaware Burnish, but for a reason that Lio can never quite put his finger on, he has always just been so tired. He gets a degree in chemical engineering and works in a Foresight laboratory, his life is easy and simple until the day his building is picked as the location of a Mad Burnish attack. Lio is stuck is one of the store rooms and can see smoke seeping in underneath the door, can see the purple flares out the window that he knows is too far up to jump out of and just hopes that Burning Rescue arrives soon. They do, and after a few minutes the storeroom door is being kicked down by a man, at least a foot taller than him, who ungraciously dumps cooling fluid on him before they jump out a window. Lio blacks out about halfway through this endeavour. He comes to laying on the grass, the fire still burning and the same man leaning over him, telling him he is okay now but something in his chest clicks and falls into place and _ no, nothing is okay now _ . He feels as if he is burning hotter than the surface of the Sun for a moment, flames erupting from his skin but this can’t be happening, surely he would’ve known this earlier. Lio Fotia is a Burnish, the Mad Burnish rescue him but it is not enough. He dies on the floor of a cave years later, his ashes mixing in with the dust around him. Soft laughter echoing all around.

△ △ △

Galo has always had a burning soul but there is a time where it burns in a different way, burns white hot with the intensity of a thousand stars, burns with the intent to burn this planet to the ground and not stop. He grew up listening to stories from his grandfather of firefighters, and found himself oddly entranced by the fire in the footage, the way it moves with an elegant ferocity, a beautiful form of destruction. That is what Galo wants to be, and so that is what he becomes. His house burns down as a child, his first major Burnish flare and he is torn between feeling horror for what he has done as he hears the foundations cracking and wanting more, intoxicated by the feeling of power flowing through his veins, egged on by the chanting in his head telling him to keep going. So he runs away, finds safety with a large group of Burnish — the Mad Burnish, he vaguely remembers hearing their name in news reports — who take him in, and he rises through the ranks, becoming a leader in time.

Lio grows up spoilt rotten, his family's money at his disposal and parents who were so busy they never truly taught him consequences to his actions. He moves to the big city when he turns 21, drives his bike into Ignis’ car when he turns 23, leaving himself with six months of community service to be completed at the Burning Rescue HQ to repay his debt to Ignis. He would have paid the repairs outright, but Ignis is too honourable, more interested in teaching Lio a lesson, a lesson that he does learn over time and ends up staying longer than his six months. He works closely with Lucia and the mechs, staying as far out of the action as he can.

It is a year and two days after he first joined the Burning Rescue that he meets Galo for the first time. Burning Rescue are completely overwhelmed with the fire on a Foresight Pharmaceutical building, a burning piece of rubble have landed on Lio’s truck that he only narrowly escaped leaving him useless to help in this fire. All he knows about what is going on up on the rooftop between Remi and the Mad Burnish leaders is what crackles through his damaged headset —  _ wait, where’d he go _ — Remi’s voice cuts off mid confusion, Aina responds quickly —  _ I can’t see any sign of him on the sensors _ — before Lio feels his headset being pulled off his head, feels a burning heat behind him and doesn’t have to turn around to know he’s found him.

In front of him is pure Burnish energy, solid black like obsidian with flashes of red and yellow peaking through the cracks in the armor that is easily twice the size of him in every way. Lio swears he sees it smile for a moment.

“What do you want?” he asks, standing straight and staring up at the thing in front of him.

It laughs. “You know, your little creations are quite the pesky little problem for us, did you know that?”

For a moment, the fear Lio feels is overpowered by an odd sense of pride, “Sorry to be an inconvenience, but you Mad Burnish are a problem for us and I’m just doing my job.”

“Well, could you stop? Or, maybe you could do your job for us instead?” the voice sounding far too lighthearted for the vessel it is coming from.

Lio blinks twice, from both the oppressive heat and the sheer shock of this proposition, “Don’t kill me for this, but I can’t do that.”

The armor smiles wide, all sharp edges reflecting the light from the flames like a prism, “Hey! Us Mad Burnish don’t just kill for no reason,” he sounds genuinely offended at Lio’s insinuation, “but hey, no harm no foul, thought it would be worth a shot,” he disappears in a plume of fire in front of Lio’s eyes, his headset set neatly on the ground.

He is fired, shortly after. Too many people saw him talking to the leader of the Mad Burnish and he had done nothing to apprehend him, it was bad for the image of the Burning Rescue so he is let go. He recieves a letter a few days later as he is packing boxes to leave the city.

“ _ Sorry to hear about your job, that’s my bad. Job offer still stands, _ ” it reads, followed by a list of coordinates to somewhere out near the volcano. Lio isn’t sure why he decides to go along with it, maybe it’s because at this point he has nothing to lose and is curious as to where this will go. He is on his bike that evening, a few belongings in his backpack and nothing more and he rides off into the sunset, past buildings he has helped to save in the past and he rides for a day straight before he arrives. It is underwhelming and yet exactly what he expected when he arrives, not that he expected the Burnish to have some lavish compound, he expected better than a few concrete buildings jutting out of the sand.

Two Burnish come ahead to greet him, flame crafted weapons aimed at him and give him a pat down, check his backpack for any ammunition before leading him through the compound to a small room in the back.

“Boss,” the one with long black hair says.

“He actually came,” says the other, a shorter man with reddish-brown hair who pulls a door open and ushers Lio in.

In front of him, he presumes, is the elusive leader of the Mad Burnish. He does not look at all like what Lio expected. He expected to see some rugged old veteran from the Great World Blaze, not a man maybe a year older than himself with bright blue hair and soft eyes. He’s shirtless too, and Lio works to keep his eyes on his face.

“Not what you expected I’m guessing? Ha, I get that a lot,” he laughs to himself before extending an arm out towards Lio, “I’m Galo Thymos, and you’re Lio, yes?”

Lio nods, “Lio Fotia, what did you need me for?” he extends his arm out in response and shakes Galo’s hand, feels a spark run up his arm leaving goosebumps in it’s wake. He puts it down to the heat from the Burnish’s hand.

Galo ruffles his own hair as he thinks, “Honestly? We could use your technological skills here, we’re just tryna make this place more livable for us ya know?”

“You staged an  _ attack  _ to talk to me, getting me  _ fired  _ from my job, and sent a risky letter with your  _ exact  _ location on it, just to ask me if I can help you  _ renovate _ ?” 

Galo looks thoughtful for a second before cracking a smile, “Yeah, guess I did.”

“How are you in charge of an organisation?” Lio asks, and hears a stifled laugh from the other side of the door.

“I guess they like me, I’m a “ _ people person _ ” or something like that,” he makes quotation marks in the air as he speaks, “but what do you say? Will you do it?”

He’s come this far, Lio thinks, “I’ll do it.”

He stays with the Burnish after that, shares the room with Galo until they can find the room for him. He builds a makeshift air conditioner for the buildings, spends his time trying to work on building a refrigeration system to make the ration situation bearable, takes trips back to Promepolis under the cover of darkness to grab food from service stations to keep morale up. He is surprised by how much he likes living here, surprised by how enjoyable this work has been. Sure he misses the Burning Rescue, but he knows now that Galo and the rest of the Mad Burnish will never actually harm them so he doesn’t stress as much anymore. He is caught off guard by how much he cherishes Galo’s company, realises it the first time he was gone —  _ official Mad Burnish work, need to know basis _ — for a few days and the place just seems a lot more empty.

When Galo returns, he returns with hundreds more Burnish in tow, all rescued from the Foresight Foundation and Lio is immediately put to work tending to their wounds using his first aid training from the Burning Rescue. As he listens to them recount the horrors they went through at the hands of Kray, Lio feels as if he could vomit. He notices as Galo leaves the room, feels the distinct vibrations through the walls of a Burnish Flare nearby less than an hour later and he wonders when he’ll come back. It takes two days, but Galo returns, he is breathing heavily and something behind his eyes has changed. His eyes are not kind anymore, they are not warm. They are hard, they are burning and they are angry.

It doesn’t matter, in the end, nothing in this timeline does. The day after Galo returns, ice bullets rain down through the rooftops, the buildings toppled to the ground and Lio is not a Burnish, Lio cannot survive this. The roof collapses on him, and mercifully it is over quickly, the gunfire merging together with laughter in his head.

Galo is the catalyst that burns the world this time.

△ △ △

The next few don’t go nearly as well.

In one, they almost make it, but Galo hits the ice first and breaks his neck on impact. 

The next, they get even closer, so close the Promare can feel it through dimensions, through timelines, they made it into the core, Lio syncing with them and learning their true intentions. He doesn’t wake up, no amount of CPR works, even his own shared flame returned is not enough to kickstart the ignition in his heart and he dies there, on the cold floor of the Parnassus engine, his ashes mixing in the air with many of his brethren. He dies knowing what the Promare really want, and Galo dies leaning over where his body once was, fresh bullet hole in his head.

There is another where Galo dies in an early Mad Burnish attack, back before Lio took the leadership and back when they were still killers.

Another, when the girl he saves on his first job ignites, Aina is too slow to pull him off of her and he goes up with her.

△ △ △

But then, the pieces all fall into place. 

They make it to the core, stand in it together, Lio burns the world to pieces and Galo puts it out. Out of the ashes of their burnt out planet, Galo makes it stronger and brighter than ever before. In their heads, childlike laughter and they feel they have heard this many times before, over many lifetimes as they momentarily burn brighter than any supernova has ever been.

If there is a Lio Fotia then there is a Galo Thymos. This is a universal truth.

The Promare thank them as they leave.

The two of them step out into the dawn of a new day, the sun rising into a smokeless sky.

“Lio, do you ever feel like this is what we were born to do?” Galo asks, looking more thoughtful than Lio thinks he has ever seen him, and Lio thinks he has seen him many times over.

There is something on the tip of his tongue, a match begging to be lit, he thinks he knows Galo better than anyone ever has, feels as if he has known him in different lifetimes. That’s not possible though, so he puts it down to their synching in the core, “I do, actually.”

If there is a Lio Fotia, then there is a Galo Thymos. This is a truth for anyone who interacts with either of them for the decades following. They live together, Galo offered as Lio had no place to live and Lio never moves out. They never tell anyone they are together, people can just tell, the way Galo follows Lio like a moth drawn to a flame. They get married, five years after they saved the world. One can not exist without the other. When Galo dies of old age, Lio follows the next day. 

They remember all of it, when they die, greeted with soft, childlike laughter as they fall into the peaceful void.

**Author's Note:**

> the idea for this fic originally came from a lyric i remember from a hymn i learnt in primary school, but about half way through it warped into "what if i used a maths concept, that way i dont feel like im procrastinating on my exam revision" anyway. truth tables, if then statements, all that fun stuff.
> 
> this is another case of "i wanted to read this au but couldnt find it so Guess I'll Do It Myself" lmao! hope you enjoyed it if youve read this far! i'd love to hear ppl's thoughts but no pressure dw dw


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